Readers Suggest

“Readers Suggest” is something new we’re trying out here at IndieGala. As always, we’re eager for opinions, thoughts and suggestions. Heck, that’s why we ask for them so much. We appreciate and value your opinion and your suggestions as well. But starting from right now, we will try to make some of your suggestions in what we hope it would be a regular occurrence. So, with that in mind, we called this sequence Readers Suggest Vol. 1 and we’ll be covering House Of The Dead. This is just the start, and with plenty more to come hopefully, and plenty of movies to review of course.

Readers Suggest: What Prompted It?

Well, as you can probably tell from the title, this particular review is a suggestion from one of our readers. So, thanks Simon Nikolaev for your suggestion. I told ya to stay tuned, there’s plenty of more Uwe Boll projects to come. Much to my dismay, I must admit. Indeed, House Of The Dead is my third Uwe Boll movie that I’m reviewing (after Far Cry and BloodRayne) and I honestly can say… He’s not really growing on me. Not one bit. But it was an experience nonetheless. And I must share it with you, so here I go.

And yes, we hope that this first edition of Readers Suggest will encourage you to share some of your favorite movies, guilty pleasures and downright exhausting movie/video game experiences. House of The Dead is the first such experience in this new series we’re trying out. But we hope it won’t be the last.

Readers Suggest House Of The Dead

Readers Suggest And IndieGala’s Games

Now, we don’t really have House Of The Dead to offer at the moment, we do have plenty of great zombie-filled video games to choose from. Seriously. From the well-known titles like Resident Evil (which are always awesome) to Zombies On A Plane (available here). And pretty much everything in between of course. Bloody Zombies is nice (available here), and so is Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip (available here). Don’t miss out on any of them!

House Of The Dead Fight Scene

But Is House Of The Dead Any Good?

Oh no. Nope. No, it isn’t. And much like the previous two Uwe Boll movies I had to suffer through. But I think the House Of The Dead is the biggest offender of them all. Why? Because it’s ridiculous, poorly made and downright dull, as it is non-scary. Seriously, it has plenty of potentials to check out the scare factor boxes (remote forbidden island, zombies and, kick-ass source material) but nope. It doesn’t do justice to any of these things. Yeah, House of The Dead is so bad I had to watch it with pauses. 90 minutes movie, that I muscled through in about 2 days. But I did it, and I lived to tell a story about it.

But in its most basic plot-line, House Of The dead is about a bunch of college students that are headed to “Isla del Morte” to attend a rave party. After they miss the ferry, they’ll pay a boat captain named Victor Kirk (Jürgen Prochnow) and his first mate Salish (Clint Howard) to take them to the secluded, dangerous island. But what they’ll find anything but a rave party. They’ll eventually find lots of zombies to kill.

House Of The Dead Shooting

Horrible Script, Terrible Acting And Atrocious Direction

The holy trinity of an Uwe Boll movie, I guess. But yeah, House Of The Dead is no different than any of his previous projects, I’m afraid. In terms of the quality is downright appalling, but because it’s based on a different game you can clearly see some visual differences. First and foremost, after you go through the opening scene of the movie, and you actually get to witness the zombies…

You’re in for a surprise there, let me tell ya. First of all, these are some very acrobatic zombies! They sure know how to fight too. And secondly, you’ll probably notice the brief insert shots from the actual video game. They’re inserted during the transition scenes but they’re not doing much really. And I suppose they’re the only thing that reminds you that you’re watching a House of The Dead adaptation. But not much beyond that. Seriously, after a while, they become an annoyance since there’s no artistic (or any other reason for that matter) to be there.

Dull and Uninspired Characters

No, I’ll add dumb to the list of adjectives. But you can go ahead ad add some more, when it comes to the characters. And there are quite a few here, but except one (I won’t get into spoiler territory) you won’t remember any of them. Or care whether they live or die in this movie. Almost every one of them is and proud of it, and I was losing my patience because of that.

Come on! Use your brains if you want to survive! And of course, there’s the frequent collaborator of Uwe Boll. Jürgen Prochnow is here as Captain Kirk (get it?) but I can’t for the life of me fandom what Clint Howard is doing here. Whatever his motives are for being in House Of The Dead, they’re not really worth it in the end. He’s so bad in this movie that makes the other actors look like god damn Oscar winners. But I digress.

Earlier in this article, I mentioned how non-scary this movie is… And I mean it. From the zombies to the main villain, to everything else. There’s no suspense in the delivery, no setup and certainly no development of anything. Let alone the plot or the characters. There’s plenty of exposition in the story, and horrible, unnecessary flashback scenes.

The Shootouts Are Hilarious!

And epic, and hilarious but yeah. Mostly hilarious. I laughed more in that scene than I care to admit. And if you’re trying to pinpoint where most of the 12 million dollars budget went, then look no further. It’s in the making of the graveyard shutout scene. You’ve got zombies galore, 360 pivot scenes, slow-motion shots and generic 90’s music. Oh and in case you missed the entire scene, there’s a chance to check out the action in reverse (again) right after that. Yup, Uwe Boll insists you witness his John Woo-inspired style of shooting and insists that you don’t forget it. Except Woo does it so much better, but you know that already. Right?

Oh, and at the end of this article, I should probably mention that there’s a brief appearance from a character within the game. But it’s mostly there to make you go huh… whatever. I’m just glad the movie is over.

Are You A Fan Of House Of The Dead? How About Of Readers Suggest?

If you are, make sure to help out our novelty here at IndieGala’s Blog. Help Readers Suggest grow and make sure to suggest more video game adaptations for me to review. Yes, even Uwe Boll ones.

Best Uwe Boll GIFs | Gfycat

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